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A new report has outlined the next steps in the long-term management of data for the Joint Information Systems Committee and other higher education institutions.

Dealing with data reviews a variety of data, and arrangements for its accumulation, storage and use, across disciplines. It sets out 10 key recommendations and a further 25 of lesser importance.

Written by Dr Liz Lyon, director of the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) and associate director of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), the report recommends that Jisc develop a data audit framework to enable all universities and colleges to carry out an audit of departmental data collections, awareness, policies and practice for data curation and preservation.

The paper also calls on research-funding organisations to openly publish, implement and enforce a data management, preservation and sharing policy. In addition, says the report, each higher-education institution should implement its own policy, which recommends data deposit in an appropriate open access data repository and/or data centre where these exist.

On sustainability, the review proposes Jisc should work in partnership with the research-funding bodies to jointly commission a cost-benefit study of data curation and preservation infrastructure. It also recommends that the DCC play a role in delivering coordinated training programmes and supporting materials, targeted at researchers in specific disciplines.

Earlier this month Jisc, which supports education and research by promoting the use of technology, announced it had funded the creation of an Open Access repository for academic papers.